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Thursday, June 11, 2015

House news

I would like to thank "Misty" (great name!) for her comment the other day, She stated as a real estate agent herself, if a client is unhappy....they would rather release them from the contract than risk the bad word of mouth. That was the final encouragement we needed....and we fired our realtor.

I will go back to that in a minute...but we debated if we should have another realtor lined up before we pulled the plug....sort of the "you don't quit a job until you have a new one" mentality. But at least my experience with the first phone call to another realtor confirmed that we were on the right path.

During a casual conversation with one of our contractors (who I see maybe 1 every few months, she mentioned that if I needed someone she had a great person to recommend that she has used for both buying and selling homes. When I reached out to her, she looked at the MLS and my house was still showing as "active," although we had already signed the paperwork to terminate the contract. She said that technically she couldn't discuss anything while we were under contract with another agent. I assured her that we have terminated the contract, and while she did talk to me, she was very guarded.

(within an hour of that conversation we got the confirmation that the listing had been removed)

Back to our realtor....

We sent an e-mail to him, and CC'ed the owner of the agency, stating that due to communication issues, the appearance of minimal effort, and the long time that the house has been on the market, that we felt that we needed to part ways. We also stated that we would be calling the office to discuss this with the owner to find out what our options were.

We received a fast response (like the fastest response we have EVER gotten!) that said he talked to the owner already, and that's fine we will terminate the contract. Then....he threw the price back us and implied that it was overpriced. We responded with a) the price was mutually agreed upon, with comps to support it, b) 2 houses in the neighborhood have sold in the neighborhood in our price range, and in under 60 days on the market, c) none of the feedback from 2 dozen showings mentioned the price, and d) if he felt that was the issue...then as the professional, it is his job to talk to us about that and explain what is happening and what we need to do to move forward.

I think he knew that his comment was unprofessional, because 2 hours later we got another email that apologized.

I had a lengthy discussion with the owner of the agency, who did more listening than anything else. Of course she wanted to know about our frustrations and specifically about the communication issues that we brought up. She asked a very fair question....how long would it take to get a response? I mean, if we didn't hear from him in 20 minutes and we were upset, that is unreasonable. When I said that it would vary, but usually 4 days....she repeated it to make sure she heard right. FOUR days? Yes Ma'am. FOUR days.

She was quite upset when I related the story from 2 weeks ago when we has a 5:15 scheduled showing that opened my front door at 6:30pm while we were here and never called to say they were running late. (That part is not on our realtor....how he handled it is). As soon as it happened, I contacted our realtor and left a message. No response. Next morning....no response. Reached out to him again....finally got a response that said "sorry that happened, I will talk to him." The owner didn't understand why I didn't get a call back the evening of the showing.

Anyway, the owner of course apologized, and offered to set us up with another agent, or we can part ways and good luck to us all. My gut says just part ways. G-man thinks we should meet with the other agent just to interview her, and if we find someone we like better, then we decline the offer and part ways.

Today I will be calling the 2 other agents that sold the houses in our neighborhood. The previously mentioned agent that I spoke to will be coming over on Sunday to do a walk through so she can do a market analysis. And to appease my husband, I will talk to the agent from the same office we have been with.

After months on the market, my realtor actually did a presentation for me about one of those pyramid type selling things and I knew then she wasn't right for me. Trying to peddle her "other" business to me left a nasty taste in my mouth. I ended up switching to a new realtor that was recommended by a friend and my house sold within 90 days. The new realtor was very blunt about what I needed to do to sell which for me was fix the curb appeal (I did some flower planting) and lower the price. Good luck and I hope you find a better realtor!

I am prepared that a new realtor will want some changes. There were things we were going to do when the first went on the market and thr realtor said it wasn't needed. I have a feeling at least some of that....along with new things....will be coming down the pike.

Zillow now allows you to see what the price per sq ft is. In my area houses are going between $100-$110 per sq ft. It might be worth a look to see what the sq ft cost of your house at its current price compares to other houses on the market as well as the comps that recently sold.

When selling our homes, we have cancelled contracts on people who asked a gazillion questions, and some of these were just plain crazy. These are people who do not want to buy! They have not made the commitment to a home purchase and will just string you along. We learned we will not close the sale with these kinds of people.

We once terminated a contract with a realtor and her client who insisted on a $10,000 radon gas inspection and "repair" (if that is what you call it.) We knew it was nonsense. The wife was paranoid about making any purchase decision. The realtor threatened to badmouth our home around town. We would not be strong armed, and that home sold to another buyer within 2 weeks.

You are doing the right thing by changing agents. Your agent should feel like your best friend when they are selling your house!

The best thing we ever did when we sold our house last year was to dump our original agent. It was kind of sad because she had been a friend and we had promised her we would let her list our house when the time came to sell. She proved to be a very bad fit for us though, overpriced the house, her marketing abilities were sub par, but the last straw was when we agreed to let her also represent the buyers and she decided to take their side over ours even though we were her initial clients (the buyers had been clients of hers years ago). Stupid on our part, but it brought out the agent's true colors.

We interviewed four new agents within a couple of days of terminating with our original agent. My primary focus was on how well did these agents market themselves? If they couldn't sell themselves to me online, how good were they really going to be at marketing our house? So many agents had nothing about themselves online, no write-ups, or what they did have was insipid. The four we interviewed had terrific personal websites, lists of their achievements and what the service they would provide. We came up with a list of questions, but basically just sat with each one and had a long chat and talked about the house, etc. We could have gone with every one of them, but felt a stronger "tug" with the last agent and signed with her. Maybe most importantly, we learned a lot from all of them though about ways the house could be better staged, things we could still improve, and how they would market the house. Our house sat down a long lane off of a somewhat busy street which turned off some buyers. Our first agent did nothing to inform buyers about the lane, or about the wonderful neighborhood or top-rated schools; her write-up was truly insipid. Our second agent made living down the lane something you had to have, and touted the schools, neighborhood, walkability, etc. She had our house sold before it even went back on the market, for full asking price!

I know you are busy, but encourage you to find a couple more agents to interview. Even though you will only choose one in the end, you will learn a great deal from talking to them all.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have interviews set up with 3 realtors and am waiting to hear from a 4th. I already have a hierarchy in my head based on phone conversations so I am interested to see how it plays out.

Our realtor was so bad that we found out our conditional offer had fallen through when we ran into the guy who had put in the offer. He casually mentioned that they had taken their home off the market and we're no longer interested I buying ours. Brutal!!!!!! The realtor was a lady from church whom my parents knew. Well we, learned just because you are a nice christian lady does not mean you can sell homes :).

Good. I truly hope you can move sooner rather than later...this situation can't be good. I know you said price is not the issue, but If it was me, I think we would try to cut our losses, and sell....anything, and I mean ANYTHING will sell if the price is low enough. I would want my family together. Plus, it is cheaper in the south in many ways. Good luck.